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USSR Space Race PHUNC VI A Timeline of Exploration 1960s USSR Space Race Letter from the Crisis Director Dear Delegates, My name is Ben Akhtar, and I will be serving as your crisis director for the USSR Space Race at PHUNC VI. I am a sophomore at Penn State and I am pursuing a major in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Computer Science. If you have any questions about Penn State, rockets, or how to be a nerd, I am your guy. I love to hang out with my wonderful friends, work on rockets, and play video games in my free time. Lately, I have been playing too much Rocket League. I also enjoy hiking and spending time baking sweets. I especially love to make cakes and brownies. I have been involved in Model United Nations since the freshman year of high school and attended PHUNC as a delegate once. I joined PSIADA last year and now serve as the Technology Chair on the Executive Board. I have had the pleasure of serving as a co-chair at PHUNC V and a chair at PUNC XI. I am looking forward to crisis directing this year and cannot wait till PHUNC gets started. I am very excited to meet all of my delegates and believe that this will be a great PHUNC. I cannot wait to see how you respond to any challenges presented to you in committee. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to me! I am also extremely happy to have Kayla, my chair, by my side all the way. She is so experienced and such a wonderful person that I know if I have any problems, Kayla will be there to help. I cannot wait to see you at PHUNC! Sincerely, Ben Akhtar [email protected] Presented by Center for Global Studies 1 Letter from the Chair Hello! My name is Kayla Wendt and I am your committee chair. I am from Lansdale, Pennsylvania, and I am honored and excited for the opportunity to chair for a PHUNC committee again! I am a senior here at Penn State, and I am currently pursuing my bachelor’s degree in International Relations and History, with minors in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. I am also in a five year program, meaning that I am also working towards my masters in International Affairs at the Penn State School of International Affairs. I have been in the Penn State International Affairs and Debate Association for the past three years, and I have enjoyed serving this organization in many capacities over the years, including serving as the current Secretary General for our collegiate conference, PUNC XII, in the spring. Joining PSIADA played a large part in helping me decide what exactly I wanted to do with my life and I hope your experience here at PHUNC will help to guide you in your future endeavors the same way Model UN has helped me. As your chair, I have a few expectations of you as delegates. I expect all delegates to have a working knowledge of parliamentary procedure. That being said, you do not have to be an expert; I don't consider myself an expert either. This is a learning conference after all, and I am here to help you become a better delegate. I also expect delegates to be able to correctly draft a directive. I encourage everyone to commit to the personality and behavior of the person he or she is portraying. Being well informed on the background and duties of your position will not only help you as a delegate but also the committee as a whole. I also stress the importance of maintaining decorum; to help with this I encourage you to pass notes. Most importantly, I want you to HAVE FUN! Sincerely, Kayla Wendt Presented by Center for Global Studies 2 Background History of Cold War and How It Began: The Cold War has ties rooted all the way back in World War 1. After the Bolshevik Revolution, there came a civil war within the Soviet Union. The Whites, the non-communists, were supported by the United States and Britain, among other nations. This set the tone early as these formed icy relations between the West and the Soviet Union. After the Soviets won the civil war, the West refused to officially recognize the Soviet Union. It was not until Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President that the United States finally recognized the Soviet Union. The West in Europe and the United States, even after recognizing the Soviet Union, never fully trusted them and continually sided with the Nazis over them in the years leading up to World War II. This led to high tensions between the two sides. After the Nazis declared war on both the Soviet Union and the United States, there was no other way around it but to work together. Even when allied, these two nations hardly got along. Joseph Stalin got more and more frustrated as his allies continually pushed back their invasion date of D-Day. Roosevelt was unhappy that Stalin refused to help with Japan. As the war wore on in 1944 and into 1945, it became clear the Soviets had no intention of freeing the Eastern European states they had taken from the Nazis. This caused, as Winston Churchill so elegantly put it, an iron curtain to descend over Europe after the war. The Americans did not appreciate the building of the Soviet sphere in Eastern Europe, while the Soviets believed this was the only way to prevent another invasion of their homeland. Events slowly began to unfold that escalated tensions more and more, including the Chinese Civil War and the Berlin Airlift. Eventually, in 1950, the Korean War broke out. The first major proxy war of the Cold War had begun, and the Americans and the rest of the West scrambled to fend off the North Korean invasion. Eventually, after three years of bloody warfare between the communists and the West, an armistice would be agreed upon. Although the Korean War may have ended, it was just a precursor to what was to come as tensions continued to rise with the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Lead Up to the Space Race: The Soviet and United States space programs existed for many years before World War II. However, after the war, a space race began to heat up. The idea of improving on German designs was attractive, and both nations hoped to outdo each other in space. This was just another part of the cold war as it extended to space. After the war, both nations attempted to recruit German rocket scientists, as they would help further their own space programs since many scientists were far above any person the US or Presented by Center for Global Studies 3 USSR currently employed. Unfortunately for the USSR, they did not pick up as prestigious German rocket scientists as the Americans, which left them at a slight disadvantage. This was because, as quoted by Mitchell R. Sharpe, “We despise the French, we are mortally afraid of the Soviets, we do not believe the British can afford us. So that leaves the Americans.” Even though the Soviets made various offers of rations, luxurious housing, and being able to stay in Germany, something even the Americans did not offer, few took the offer, which helped give the Americans access to some of the absolute best rocket scientists in the world at the time. Unlike in the United States, German rocket scientists in the USSR were allowed little involvement in the actual development of rockets. Their main job was to write papers. This was to help the Russian rocket scientists understand the more advanced concepts the Germans knew. This occurred for a number of years, and the Soviets eventually surpassed the Germans in knowledge. This left only Russians working within the Soviet space agency, cutting down on the chance of treason or a knowledge leak within the agency. The Germans suggested many times for the USSR to develop rockets or missiles that were far advanced than what the Soviets had accomplished at the time. These efforts were futile, however, as many Soviet scientists advocated against allowing the Germans to create their own rockets. This ended in the Germans never seeing their designs put into practice and themselves pushed to the shadows. It took the Russians 12 years after the end of World War II to finally launch an intercontinental ballistic missile. It is likely they learned much of the research from their German counterparts, since they had created the V-2 during the war. Even though it took over a decade, the Soviets still beat the Americans to this accomplishment and it was one of the early events that began adding tension to the situation. It was an important event as a lot of the early Soviet scientists working on replicating the V-2 rocket went on to play important roles in the Soviet space agency. Perhaps more important, however, is what this accomplishment represented in the bigger picture. Khrushchev would go on to support the intercontinental ballistic missile program with more funding than the space program, leaving the space program to lag behind the Americans program later in the 60s. Beginning in the 1950s, the Soviet Union began to attempt to launch animals into Presented by Center for Global Studies 4 space. Earlier, the Soviets had launched animals in some of their replicated V-2 rockets and succeeded, so they thought this would be a good way to gain experience.
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